


An Observation on the Doctor

by orelseatlastsheunderstoodit



Series: My Doctor Meta [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2019-07-05 15:39:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15866622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orelseatlastsheunderstoodit/pseuds/orelseatlastsheunderstoodit





	An Observation on the Doctor

A quick observation from a re-watch of "Rose":

The Doctor brushes off Mickey’s possible death (and/or capture to keep the Auton copy alive), forgets Mickey’s name, and then immediately forgets Mickey  _entirely_  because, as he snaps at Rose, “It’s because I’m trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering on top of this planet, all right?” ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chakoteya.net%2FDoctorWho%2F27-1.htm&t=MzdhZTcxYjE5YTAyMTA2MjU1MDBlY2Y3NTU0NDAyZWQwMWVlMDgyYixHdGhzeVd4cg%3D%3D&b=t%3A6tOCh6Sn38LfuqvcyD6tPA&p=http%3A%2F%2Forelseatlastsheunderstoodit.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F119492553560%2Fan-observation-on-the-doctor&m=0)). The first piece of context to how the Doctor is thinking comes earlier in the episode, when Rose is trying to figure out what’s going on:

> ROSE: But, all this plastic stuff. Who else knows about it?   
>  DOCTOR: No one.   
>  ROSE: What, you’re on your own?   
>  DOCTOR: Well, who else is there? I mean, you lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed, and watch telly, while all the time, underneath you, there’s a war going on. ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chakoteya.net%2FDoctorWho%2F27-1.htm&t=MzdhZTcxYjE5YTAyMTA2MjU1MDBlY2Y3NTU0NDAyZWQwMWVlMDgyYixHdGhzeVd4cg%3D%3D&b=t%3A6tOCh6Sn38LfuqvcyD6tPA&p=http%3A%2F%2Forelseatlastsheunderstoodit.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F119492553560%2Fan-observation-on-the-doctor&m=0))

He’s speaking rather calmly, but there’s this undercurrent of bitterness and anger in his last words, a bit of railing against the unfairness of it all. They get normal lives, something he’s never had, and he fights to save them and they never never know the things he’s done to protect the universe. In these early episodes, he hasn’t ‘come home,’ so to speak, from the Time War-–it’s still a raw, festering wound. He continues, and thus, the war continues.

The other bit of context is that he hasn’t stopped the Autons yet; he’s in the midst of tracking their signal, and the duplicate!Mickey’s head had just melted and he thought that they’d lost it completely and that the earth would be destroyed (as I imagine he’d seen in some sort of timeline during the Time War, is my guess). And when the Doctor is focused on finding a solution, he’s focused on finding a solution, usually to the exclusion to other things until whoever his companion breaks in.

It’s callous for the Doctor, to brush off someone’s death, possible or not, right? After all, this is the same person who says each individual is important, that he’s never met anyone who wasn’t important at some point, who believes in the good of people. But this Doctor, fresh off the Time War and off what he believes is the destruction of his own planet. He’s spent hundreds of years alone, fighting, watching people die in pointless battles and fruitless, futile victories until he reached a breaking point and said “No more.” And, while I have no personal experience in it, I’d think it would be hard to shake that kind of thinking.

And hundreds of years later, he finds himself in the same mindset. He’s spent hundreds of years alone, fighting, watching people die in pointless battles and fruitless, futile victories until he reached the moment he thought he was going to be no more. He figured out ways to keep all his enemies from breaching the siege placed on Trenzalore-–tricks Weeping Angels with mirrors, figures out a way to shoot a wooden Cyberman–-and all to keep his people, the ones he’d thought he’d destroyed, from coming through a rift in time and space and reigniting the war that he, the Bad Wolf, and Clara had finally stopped.

And he ends up not dying, again. He’s a soldier whose fight is over and yet he doesn’t know how or when to stop fighting. What’s worse is that he wasn’t just a soldier ending a war on Trenzalore; he’d prolonged it, directed it, sent people to their deaths, all in protection of the townspeople and of the people on the other side of the crack. He’d become a general, one of the last things he’d ever wanted to be.

He continues, and thus, the war continues (like the Skovox Blitzer, like the Mummy on the Orient Express, all [“filled with kit”](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chakoteya.net%2FDoctorWho%2F34-8.html&t=ZWVhZjBjN2E3MzE1MTE5YjVhNGRjZmVkNWM3ODU2Y2VjZTNiNDM5NSxHdGhzeVd4cg%3D%3D&b=t%3A6tOCh6Sn38LfuqvcyD6tPA&p=http%3A%2F%2Forelseatlastsheunderstoodit.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F119492553560%2Fan-observation-on-the-doctor&m=0) that won’t let the war be over and requires the fighting to continue). But this time, the knowledge that had made him dismissive of Mickey makes him dismissive of pretty much anyone except Clara but especially soldiers, since seeing them reminds him of Trenzalore and the things he did in that war, as a general, as an officer. The knowledge nags at him, gnaws at his identity. “Am I a good man?” he asks Clara, while fearing that he never could be.

And so the Doctor does the same he did when many of us first met the Doctor, brushing off deaths (possible and actual) in the midst of a situation. He nonchalantly waves his hand over goop that used to be a human while they’re miniaturized inside a Dalek that’s trying to kill them. He waves goodbye to the Merry Man riddled with disease. He works through the mystery on the Orient Express as people die around him, as the clock literally counts down the seconds.

And it seems that he forgets those who died in the midst of the battle, in the midst of the situation, but he actually doesn’t: 

> CLARA: So you were pretending to be heartless.   
>  DOCTOR: Would you like to think that about me? Would that make it easier? I didn’t know if I could save her. I couldn’t save Quell, I couldn’t save Moorhouse. There was a good chance that she’d die too. At which point, I would have just moved onto the next, and the next, until I beat it. Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.  ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chakoteya.net%2FDoctorWho%2F34-8.html&t=ZWVhZjBjN2E3MzE1MTE5YjVhNGRjZmVkNWM3ODU2Y2VjZTNiNDM5NSxHdGhzeVd4cg%3D%3D&b=t%3A6tOCh6Sn38LfuqvcyD6tPA&p=http%3A%2F%2Forelseatlastsheunderstoodit.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F119492553560%2Fan-observation-on-the-doctor&m=0))

And even if he wants Clara to believe that he was pretending to be heartless (implying that he’s actually heartless), he’s not. He lists their names. He promises to remember Gretchen. But all the good things he can do to remember the people who die because of him (because he showed up, stumbled in, ordered them to, or because they chose to in order to impress him, prove something to themselves, or for their own reasons) don’t mean anything when he’s in battle.  _He_  pretends to be heartless, to make easier to make the choices that he still has to make.

And so when he’s surrounded by a literal army of the dead, gifted to him so that he can command them, order them about, do as he likes, he realizes that even if he ended up as a general at the end of his last life, the war doesn’t have to continue. He doesn’t have to be an officer, he doesn’t have to be a general, or a president. He can be the Doctor–-an idiot with a box who’s just passing through and learning.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to him showing up and saving the day (or allowing others to save it). There are still consequences, and he’s still walking wounded. He’s still got rough edges, but that’s where the companion comes in.

Except that the companion’s got rough edges of her own, and that’s going to be really intriguing.


End file.
